Cast them as cousins

Who they?

A TV academic with a loafer in the past and an eye on the future, Simon Thurley is, in his own words, "a historian with a mission". With previous stints on Time Team and The Buildings That Shaped Britain under his sensible and doubtlessly competitively priced belt, his latest venture (English Heritage, BBC2, Fridays) finds Thurley laying forth his hopes for the future of an organisation for which he is chief executive. As the government's principal adviser on "the historic environment in England", he aims to explain "why history matters".